Two ECE Profs, Two Spin-Outs, Two Product-Award Nominations

San Diego, CA, December 14, 2007 -- Products from two different companies spun out by electrical engineers at UC San Diego were two of three finalists for CONNECT’s 2007 Most Innovative New Product “MIP” Award – in the Communications Technology & Hardware category.

CONNECT is a globally recognized public benefits organization that fosters entrepreneurship in San Diego.

At a December 14, 2007 award ceremony, the winning product was announced, and it went to the third finalist Luxtera for a CMOS Photonics 10Gbps transceiver.

Rene Cruz, an electrical engineer from UCSD, founded Mushroom Networks in 2004 with Dr. Cahit Akin. Cruz currently serves as Chief Science Officer. Cruz works in the area of performance analysis of communication networks and has developed traffic and service models for communication networks that have been widely adopted within the research community. He is an internationally recognized expert in the area of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees in packet switched networks, and was elected to be a Fellow of the IEEE on the basis of these accomplishments.

Sujit Dey, an electrical engineer from UCSD, founded Ortiva Wireless in 2004 based on technologies developed at the Jacobs School. Dey heads the Mobile Systems Design and Test Laboratory within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Jacobs School. He has twenty years of experience in research, technology, and product development in wireless networks, wireless multimedia, systems, circuits, and design tools. He currently serves as the Chief Technologist for Ortiva Wireless.